Written by: Dave Cantrell
If you took the wildly wandering (and actually surprisingly warm) spirit of kosmische and, with a slotted spoon, blended it into the somewhat more organic groove of, say, a Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express, you wouldn’t necessarily find yourself in the heart of TWÏNSville but you would at least find yourself on the teasing outskirts, loitering with intent.
And what would that intent be, exactly? Well, from what we can hear, it would be the desire to mix a musical mysticism with a carefree, almost utopian joy. It would be the deathless hope to experience that spark of the 70s originators finding innate congress with our current moment’s sample-y digital possibilities. Or it could be, lo and behold, simply the wish to find your ears the target of sincere, expansive-yet-intimate machinations of our earnest, complicated mortal heart. Whichever of these desires and/or others of your own making will find succor in the perfectly-titled Human Jazz, the newest album from Miro Denck’s Berlin-based TWÏNS, out today, June 28th on the Earth Libraries imprint.
From the gentle wake-up call of opening track “Desert Mother,” flute and electric organ laying treads out of your dreams with a soft-focused determination, a mood continued, if in a more roused, caffeinated state on the jauntily persistent “Some Kind of Space,” to the subtly progressive, personal fave “A part of it (Apart from it)”, “Foliage,” spacy, hypnotic, and in the end not a little elegiac in a way that, with its brittle (which is to say brave) vulnerability and bruised pastoral tones, reminded this writer – not unpleasantly – of Traffic’s true coda When the Eagle Flies, there is a lot to savor here, to be in thrall to, an opportunity that, unless it’s our imagination, is becoming ever more thin on the ground these days. We’ve said it before and we say it again: this gig, wherein music comes at us from all directions, while at times confounding and a bit overwhelming, can also be a source of ‘that’ sublime treasure that has always defined the thrill that music is capable of bringing us like gifts wrapped in ephemeral mystery. This is one of those instances. [purchase/stream the album here, listen to it now right there ↓↓]
